Family as Refuge
The Corrections (Picador 2002, ISBN 978-0-312-42127-4) may not be a masterpiece (though, it might be) this novel, which came out just before the attacks of September 11th, seems to have something for everyone — from triumph to failure.
Franzen, who hails from a suburb of St. Louis, so perfectly captures the sense of the Midwest and the sense that family, no matter how frayed is the one place you can always turn.
The plot, while filled with somewhat intricate twists and turns, has at its heart, the simplest of devices, the unhappy family, in this case, the Lamberts.
At the head is Alfred, the father, suffering from Parkinson’s and his wife, Enid. With Alfred slipping away, Enid is taking control of the family and trying to bring everyone together for one last Christmas at home, a request not welcome by her children.
Children with Problems
Those three children are dealing with problems of their own, problems which they feel are best solved staying away from St. Jude, the mythical Midwestern town Franzen creates (and bears a bit of resemblance to St. Louis).
There’s daughter Denise, who always wants to be the good daughter but is going through a bit of a crisis as she sees everything slip away; her job as a well-known chef in a well-known restaurant disappears when she sleeps with her boss’s wife.
Son Gary is trapped in a miserable marriage with a woman who seems to take passive aggressiveness to a new level and Chip — who at one point flees to Lithuania in attempt to erase mounting debts — who so many things going wrong that you at times wonder why he doesn’t just give up.
So much of their lives intertwine at levels ranging from eye level to so far below that you realize the roots of family run very deep. And so much of how they see themselves gives this novel its titie.
Alfred saw his relationship with his daughter as a chance to correct mistakes he had made with his sons; Gary sees his life as a correction to his father’s life. Chip sees his trip to Lithuania as an opportunity to correct professional mistakes.
The Power to Compel
It’s been eight years since this book came out and it hasn’t lost its power to compel. At nearly 600-pages, it has several opportunities to creak if not crash, devolving from high satire and quality writing into clichéd characters fronting simplistic ideas.
But it never does. Franzen keeps you reading and hoping.
